


Revive

by sigo



Series: Rot [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Dark Magic, Darth Tantrum and his Evil Space Ginger, Dry Humping, Duel of the Fates, Evil Plans, Force Shenanigans, Force-Sensitive Armitage Hux, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, M/M, Millicent makes an appearance, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Seduction to the Dark Side, Sex, Terminal Illnesses, That's Not How The Force Works, villain victory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26563222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: The heavy, ornamented door opened on a circular chamber. White flames burned bright and cold in their sconces, throwing the shadows into sharper, blacker relief. It was a Temple, older than sin. Older than the High Republic, judging by the carvings in the walls. The Dark listened in this place.'Grandfather was right', Kylo thought. He’d found a coordinate cube within the dusty shelves of glowing data files -- blocky, outmoded things instead of the sleek cylinders the First Order used, and all of them covered in cobwebs. The timing of it now seemed more than fortuitous, that cube falling into Kylo’s hands just before Hux’s condition blindsided him. Knowledge had come too late to save Kylo’s grandmother. It was likely Darth Vader never made this journey. Another way in which Kylo would outpace him.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Rot [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931884
Comments: 8
Kudos: 151





	Revive

**Author's Note:**

> The bad guys win in this one.

The heavy, ornamented door opened on a circular chamber. White flames burned bright and cold in their sconces, throwing the shadows into sharper, blacker relief. It was a Temple, older than sin. Older than the High Republic, judging by the carvings in the walls. The Dark listened in this place.

 _Grandfather was right_ , Kylo thought. He’d found a coordinate cube within the dusty shelves of glowing data files -- blocky, outmoded things instead of the sleek cylinders the First Order used, and all of them covered in cobwebs. The timing of it now seemed more than fortuitous, that cube falling into Kylo’s hands just before Hux’s condition blindsided him. Knowledge had come too late to save Kylo’s grandmother. It was likely Darth Vader never made this journey. Another way in which Kylo would outpace him.

Kylo entered, walking in cautious half-steps, ready to meet an attack. His saber hilt was clasped loosely in his hand. At the first sign of movement he’d activate the blade and swing it up at any angle to defend himself. He had perfected the crossguard design. This blade would not crackle. It’s hum was steady, its edges sharp enough to leave the smallest sliver of a cut on an enemy’s hide...until he followed through on the swing. He hadn’t been able to bleed the crystal pure red. It always stopped in the orange range.

At the center of the room was the holocron his grandfather’s files on Mustafar had referenced in vague and shifting allusions. Kylo took hold of the obsidian pyramid, and a queasy green light shone like a black-smoking grease fire somewhere in the depths of the stone.

 _Reveal yourself_.

Kylo opened himself to it. “I seek Tor Valum, the Sith Master,” he said.

 _I was once named that,_ the holocron allowed. The voice was dark and sticky like an unpleasant swamp sap. _But I am no Master. Not anymore._

“You trained Darth Plagueis.” The holocron made no answer, but Kylo thought that the presence trapped within was amused. “I seek his power.”

_You seek to transfer the weight. To lift the shadow of death from one you must move it to another. To grant life you must take it._

Kylo blinked, his grip on the holocron tightening unconsciously. It was like a fairytale, the sort with the high-and-mighty morals that Luke had favored. Kylo never liked them. “I’ll do it,” he promised. _Anything. Anyone_.

 _It can’t be ‘anyone’_ . The voice from the holocron scolded him. _Anonymous sacrifices were tried, and they work no better than a Jedi fairytale, Kylo Ren_ . It seemed to spit his name with prejudice. _Who do you hate?_

The question took Kylo aback. His first answer wasn’t feasible. If he had to, he would, but…he wanted to be alive _with_ Hux. He moved one place down the list.

“Rey.”

_Who is she?_

_She’s made of the same stuff as me, but better. Good._ Kylo was still trying to formulate a verbal answer, a lie, but the holocron heard his thoughts. The voice cackled. It snorted and roared, filling the space with its maniacal giddiness. If Tor Valum still had any guts to shake and spasm or a windpipe to get choked with spit, he would be suffering under the gale of his clotted laughter.

 _Excellent. Tell me more_.

“She...she stole him. My father. It was Dameron before her, but…” Kylo cut himself off, getting flustered. When he continued his voice had a serrated edge. “She knew him for one measly journey from Jakku to Takodana. One trip, and then when I punished him for his weakness she blamed _me_ . Han Solo was a father to every lost whelp in the galaxy except the one he sired, and she _blamed me_.”

_Go on._

“They all love her.” The words tumbled out now and Kylo couldn’t have held them back if he tried. “My old friends,” though had they ever been? Perhaps not, perhaps not. Certainly not Dameron. “The traitor. Chewie. My _mother_ . Leia cast me off when I was child. I frightened her, but Rey...Rey is welcomed. Honored. She took my grandfather’s saber, too, and then broke it! She has power she shouldn’t. She’s _no one_. It’s mine by rights. MINE.” Kylo’s voice echoed around the chamber.

_She usurped your family. Your power, your destiny._

“And she destroyed Starkiller.”

_You make his grievances your own, this man you crowned._

Kylo tried to calm his breaths. They came like he’d just run a mile after his tirade. He knew little of ancient Sith teachings. He’d forged himself under a new doctrine, and Snoke favored Old Republic ways. If this voice lectured him over attachment just as Snoke had, Kylo would crush the holocron in his hand. “Is that a problem?”

The voice of Tor Valum seemed to hum just below the register of Kylo’s hearing. _The bond is dark,_ it decided. _Darker from him than you, young one. Thank him for it. Concerning this Rey...there’s one other thing._

“She’s not sick,” Kylo said. It came out a whisper, this one final admission. “And he is.”

_You make his illness your own, a crime against you, and it fuels your hate. It’s yours._

Kylo waited, heart pounding. He would give his life over for Hux, if he must. Should one of them die before the other, Kylo would rather it be himself.

 _No need. She’s not sick, you said._ The voice laughed again, a fetid and moldering sound. The drone of the Dark filled the room like the hum of a trillion wasps just above the lowest level of human hearing. Ice ran through Kylo’s veins. _Neither is he. It’s done_.

Kylo put the holocron back in its place, and a change in the pressure of the room made him turn his head. There was an archway in the wall he hadn’t seen before. No, he hadn’t seen it because it hadn’t been there. Steps led down into blackness. “What’s there?”

 _Nothing you did not bring with you_.

“Will it help me?”

 _Perhaps_.

Kylo ignited his saber and made his way down, the walls thrown into fiery orange light. A demon’s cave. He came to an antechamber of carved obsidian at the bottom, with a throne at the center. Some Lord or another had once ruled in this place millennia before his grandfather’s time, now forgotten. Kylo walked around the throne to the back, finding nothing but empty space. He completed the circle, and choked on the breath he’d just taken, gazing with horror at the body in the chair.

It was only a vision, his rational mind knew that. And visions from the Force could lie. Luke would disagree with that assessment -- he would say that the Force encapsulates every eventuality, all of them spooling out atop one another like an infinitum of different holograms played at once from the same communications device. Sometimes the Force showed you one that would not come to be, the possibility of it diminished by choices made before you’d been born. But what was that other than a lie? The throne was empty. Kylo knew it was. To his eyes, the form within it looked solid.

Hux sat on the throne. Twin saber hilts were clipped to his belt, the handles black and wickedly curved. Transparisteel windows let the light of the darkest red kyber crystals Kylo had ever seen shine out of them. Kylo recognized the style of his own robes, rendered out of wine-dark textured velvet and cut to fit Hux’s body. Hux’s skin was paler than it should be. Bloodless. Dead. But he was not slumped down in eternal slumber. He sat rigid, his head held high. His eyes were not clouded white with death, they were red. Not the damaged, wounded red of Kylo’s -- the whites were unblemished. Red had replaced green, not the hue of a bright arterial spray but the dark shade of a punctured vein. The red of a knife to the belly where pale green seagrass should be. These eyes were not blank and disinterested like those of people in visions Kylo had seen before. They seemed to watch him.

“You lie,” Kylo said, speaking to the Force.

It was Hux who answered. He vaulted himself up from the throne, quick as a viper, and brandished the sabers he wore. Their ignition darkened the room by half instead of lighting it brighter -- the core of the blades was shadow, the edges red. Kylo barely brought his own blade up in time to save himself.

The next savage strike knocked Kylo off balance, his ankle turning on uneven ground, and then one of the darksabers was buried in his chest. Kylo lay prone, his saber still burning on the stone beside him. He gasped for breath. There had been no pain, and the vision dispersed with the killing blow. It would live on inside his head. Kylo shuddered.

He struggled to his feet. His ankle hurt, but he hadn’t broken it. The throne was empty now. He staggered up the steps, hardly feeling his own limbs.

“What if I want to take it back?” Kylo asked the holocron. It stayed dark. The surface seemed opaque and brittle now, dried up. Charcoal instead of obsidian. It gave no answer.

  
  


“Back so soon?” Hux bustled around Kylo, studying diagrams on different holoscreens in the capital tower’s war room. He was standing tall and proud and very pretty in one of Kylo’s recent gifts. Kylo was shocked to see it was one of the more scandalous outfits, made of Naboo silk and velvet. The navy cloak had a high collar with a gleaming golden inset that fell onto his chest like jewelry, and the flowing fabric of the back was patterned with a sparkling map of the galaxy. The shirt he wore beneath was sheer, paired with high-waisted trousers and a golden belt.

“You’ve got some color back,” Kylo told him. It was true -- Hux developed a slight pink flush to his cheeks when planetside. It was his insistence on so many layers outside the chill of space. But he’d gone white when his insides burned up in pain.

Hux scowled, his eyes -- blessedly green -- flicking to Mitaka and then back to a diagram of the Kuat fuel mine. So word of his diagnosis had been _very_ limited. Just Hux and a few severed heads, if Kylo’s hunch was right.

“Have I?”

“You do. How are you feeling?”

For a minute Kylo thought Hux wouldn’t answer. He reached a hand out and magnified the screen he was reading. Then he sighed. “I could eat.”

It would have been a strange enough thing to hear from Hux back in his General days, when he’d subsisted on instant noodles and cigarra and caf. The way Mitaka’s eyes bugged out of his skull reinforced the miraculous nature of hearing it now. Kylo felt a wave of guilt pass over him for being absent so often, for not _knowing_. Even Mitaka suspected, Kylo could smell it on him. No matter. Kylo was here now. He’d made things right.

They took dinner in the tower’s sprawling greenhouse. Hux waved away the diplomats that approached before they could get a word out, and Kylo’s glare sent even the nosiest ones scurrying. In that way they had the evening to themselves. Kylo was gratified to see that Hux very nearly cleared his plate. He smoked a cigarra after, blowing blue smoke up into the air. Not strictly allowed within a room meant for cultivating exotic flora, but no one would tell the Chancellor to put out his tabac.

“Where are you off to next?” Hux asked, looking out the greenhouse glass at the fiery Coruscant sunset. His voice was neutral, but there was pain behind it. He didn’t often ask Kylo where his missions took him, and the true meaning was clear even without skimming his brain -- _in what way will you waste the time I’ve got left, which delusions will you chase?_

“I thought I’d stay. The Resistance is getting bolder.” Hux made a face. He was perhaps just as opposed to Kylo sticking around strictly for his benefit as he was to Kylo scouring the galaxy for a cure. And staying put _would_ be for Hux’s benefit. The rebels attacked outposts, they did not have the firepower to take the capital. But, Hux didn’t insist against it. Kylo’s heart thumped at that, the confirmation that Hux wanted him around. Each time that Hux was offered an opportunity to send him away and abstained from it was as intoxicating as the first. Kylo wrestled with the idea of telling Hux what he knew. He’d never been one for secrets, but he would leave out the vision. It had been a lie. He leaned in across the table. “It’s gone.”

Hux’s eyes found his, the cold green depths of them confused and then stormy. “Don’t.”

“Hux, I found a Temple--”

“Don’t,” Hux said again, and this time it was just resigned. Kylo fell silent. In six months Hux would believe, if not before then. Though patience wasn’t Kylo’s strong suit.

“You were looking at reports from Kuat.”

Hux took a deep drag on his cigarra and then released it. “There was a rebel attack on the fuel mine. They destroyed the orbiter and all the ships fueling up there, save one. Stolen. The Dreadnought.” Hux sighed again, sans tabac this time, his face drawn. “Our financiers were not pleased.”

“A new orbiter can be built.”

“A new target for those pests. And now they’ve got the Eclipse.”

Kylo thought about the deal he’d struck with the Dark through Tor Valum, and shivered despite the temperature-controlled greenhouse air. “The scavenger is the key. I’ll bring her down.” _I already have_.

  
  


Kylo’s willing silence was perhaps more suspicious than if he’d rambled on about magic for hours, and so the very next morning Hux sat in front of a new doctor. It was unfortunate for her. Less so for him, though under the uneasy anxiety that Kylo’s wizardry always brought out in him, Hux was not happy with good news.

“I wouldn’t call it a _miracle_ ,” she said, “But the tissue growth along your spinal column has _shrunk_ since the last scan in your file. Your cartilage is less inflamed everywhere. The tech thought it was a scanner malfunction until we tried three more. Chancellor, sir, we should nevertheless start treatment immed--”

“No. Thank you. That will be all. Actually--” Hux asked her to bring the scan tech in for a quick chat, and then drew his blaster from its thigh-holster and shot them both one after the other. Then he unplugged his datachip from the console in the wall and dropped it into the doctor’s still-steaming mug of caf.

He’d felt no pain in his fingers on the quick-draw. _What have you done to me, Kylo?_ Nothing that wouldn’t rebound with twice the original cost, Hux was sure. He didn’t let himself feel hope. That was beyond him. But he did take the long path back to his quarters, pausing to take in the shining silver of the city from a transparisteel wall, and he squeezed his hands into fists over and over, waiting for a flash of pain that never came.

He ate two meals that day, a first in ten years. Mitaka looked like he wanted to bolt from the room, watching Hux eat toast alongside his caf while they pored over trade negotiations together. It was a bit like if Kylo Ren walked up and apologized for past mistreatment, Hux thought. Mitaka would run from that if it happened. But he was _hungry_. Starved. He gathered a spot of fallen jam off the plate with his finger and licked it clean.

That evening Hux received word through his network of spies that the pilot known as Poe Dameron had in fact been pulled from service after the attack on Kuat. He hadn’t been injured in the detonation, but in the escape. He lived, but he would never fly a ship again. High blood pressure was not something Dameron could afford any longer after taking a plasma stun bolt to the heart from a disgruntled First Order officer. Word was that removal from active duty had turned the man into a shell of his former self. Hux almost pitied him.

  
  


The heat of the laser blade whizzed right by Hux’s face. Kylo wouldn’t hit him, of course. He was in control, something Hux seldom witnessed. Kylo was downright reluctant. Hux had to goad him into this, after Kylo was the one to first suggest it. Kylo dragged his feet when Hux asked to spar, and wouldn’t explain why. Not that it was pleasant for Hux to look for ways to kill Kylo anymore. Well, not wholly pleasant. Maybe that was it -- Kylo thought he’d hurt Hux by accident, lunging for a weak point on instinct. He would, if he got too rough -- Hux didn’t kid himself that he was anywhere near an equal match in sword combat. So, precaution was good. Kylo was careful. Even if Hux hadn’t brought his own saber up to stop the blow, Kylo would have stopped it, feinting around Hux’s frame, never touching. But Hux _had_ blocked the strike. Kylo smiled wide at him, the strange miasma of a mood he got into when they fought each other dissolving.

That was why Hux noticed it -- one of Kylo’s teeth was loose. Hux deactivated his blade and dropped the metal hilt to the floor without caring what happened to it. He stepped forward and brought his hands up to Kylo’s face, holding his upper lip out of the way to look at his left canine. It was _loose_ , being pushed out of the way by a new tooth below it. A sharper one.

Kylo tried to say his name. It sounded funny with Hux holding his mouth open. Kylo’s gums were bloodier than Hux had ever seen them before, too. There were spit-strings of it smeared red across his teeth. His other canine didn’t look so secure in its slot, either, now that Hux was paying attention.

“You’re growing teeth,” Hux said numbly. _Sharp ones_ . He stepped back, taking in Kylo’s whole face, studying him. There wasn’t a hint of brown in the iris of his bloody eye now. It almost seemed to glow golden in the night. Hux’s skin went cold. He nudged Kylo, trying to turn him around. Kylo deactivated his own blade and held his hands up in mock surrender, twirling slow so that Hux could look at him. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with his skin. _Yet_. Hux’s eyes raked over his scars in particular, as though Kylo might start coming apart at those seams. “What have you done?” Hux demanded.

“Don’t worry--”

“Shut up. You’re _growing teeth_.” Hux pulled Kylo back around to face him. Kylo let himself be pulled.

“Does it matter?” Kylo asked. “ _You’re not sick_. You’ve checked, haven’t you? You have. You went the very next morning, I know you did. What did you find?”

Hux released Kylo and went to the balcony railing. He clenched his hands to stop the trembling of his fingers. His nails bit into his palms. “No one cheats death, Ren.”

“The Dark Side--”

Hux laughed bitterly. “And what is the price? Even if your insult to basic biology ‘works’.” Hux whipped his head around to glare at Kylo. “Will you start rotting? Did you consider that, Ren? Snoke decayed in his throne.”

Kylo’s face went thoughtful. He was considering the question deeply, which was somehow just as enraging as if he’d brushed it off. Hux made himself put his hands on the banister. Blood seeped out from under his palms. Rage heated his chest, the sort that could be sustained a while. He’d thought it lost to him as death approached, but here it was.

Kylo came and stood next to him. “I don’t think so. I didn’t trade myself for you.”

Hux looked at him sharply, and thought of Dameron.

“I would have,” Kylo said, and Hux hit him. The first backhand slap wasn’t completely satisfying, so Hux tried another. This one left a bloody mark on Kylo’s face. It was Hux’s blood, but the sight of it quelled his anger minutely. Kylo grabbed his wrists and held him still, more for Hux’s benefit than his own. Hitting Kylo was like hitting a stone monument. Hux would break the delicate bones in his fingers before he did any real damage. “Listen to me,” Kylo pleaded. “We’re both fine.”

“You’re not _bloody_ fine.”

“It’s communion with darkness. That’s all. My grandfather--”

“I’m going to pour my renewed life into time travel specifically so that I can shoot that man,” Hux growled. He tore one of his hands free and tried to slap Kylo again. Kylo recaptured it and held the hand to his cheek, turning his head to kiss it. He licked Hux’s palm before he released it and Hux squirmed away, looking comically repulsed, especially considering the parts of his body he’d begged to feel that tongue on. He rubbed his hand on his shirt. It left a bloody mark.

“You need to trim your nails. I’ll do it for you, like a felinx. You can even scream and thrash if you want. I’m getting you one, you know. A felinx. Pick out a name.” Kylo teased. Hux was already walking inside, leaving his forgotten saber behind. He made no argument against the felinx. Kylo resolved to find a ginger one.

  
  


Kylo locked the war room door behind him. He didn’t plan to be absent from Hux’s side long, but he had to know. This was the day. Kylo took a seat, dimmed the holoscreens, and began the work of dismantling the wall he’d built in front of his connection to Rey.

He found it as bright as ever. A creased line appeared between his brows. He took a breath, and then plunged in.

Rey sat up, wiping tears from her face. She was in the med ward of a hidden base, seated beside a shrouded figure. If Kylo’s ghoulish appearance caught her off guard, it didn’t show. She looked different too. Her hair was down, and she wore a Resistance jumpsuit. Kylo tried to see into her, and she winced.

_Healthy. She’s healthy._

“You,” Rey snarled, her voice an accusation. “It’s _YOU_.” A series of images flipped by in her mind, various accidents that had befallen her friends in recent months, and something else. Something she kept guarded. Kylo understood anyway: the Resistance was broken. Dameron couldn’t fly. The traitor was unable to rouse his brothers and sisters to the same treachery, no longer a hero after a charge went off too soon above Kijimi and killed most of a battalion of troopers. The one who’d bitten Hux suffered a venomous bite herself that took one of her hands and damaged the nerves too badly for a cybernetic replacement. She was a slow hacker now. Rey herself was finding it harder to complete her Jedi training exercises, unable to lift half the weight with her mind that she had on Crait. She blamed her grief. Kylo saw that, and hundreds of other bouts of rotten luck. The rebels were injured beyond recovery, even the youths in the Resistance’s ranks too exhausted to wage a war.

But Rey was healthy.

Kylo closed off the connection, her furious face winking out, and bolted from the war room back toward Hux’s quarters.

  
  


Hux sat in his bed, alone for a time. Kylo had gone somewhere. Exactly where was unimportant. It would not be off-planet -- Kylo had kept his word on that matter. Hux was mildly surprised to get time alone on this, the last day of his projected lifespan. He’d almost expected Kylo to hover at his shoulder all day. Maybe to light some candles and chant. Hux chuckled to himself, and Millicent shifted beside him, purring. He petted her absent-mindedly. He never went to bed this early. There was still light outside. He was allowed to indulge himself today, Hux reminded himself. He hadn’t been able to face the thought of eating, despite physical hunger, which he thought Kylo picked up on. Maybe Kylo went to consult the Force on the matter of a refused dinner plate. Hux didn’t feel sick. He had perhaps never felt better.

But it was disorienting, to feel so much better than he had his whole life. He eschewed meals today not because he was in any pain or under extreme stress, but because he didn’t want to start the rest of whatever passed for his life feeling like someone else.

He ran his thumb around the silver hologram device in his hand, and then pressed the button on it. Image filled the room, a grid overlaid on the surfaces of his chambers, and then picture and sound filled the space. Home. Arkanis hadn’t felt like home when he lived there. That was his father’s doing. There was no place with Brendol Hux that was truly safe. But Arkanis was beautiful, and Hux sometimes missed the planet if not the Academy.

 _Absence makes the heart grow fonder_. The cliffside imposed on top of Hux’s furnishings seemed more lovely than he remembered. He could still feel his robe sitting cool and silken on his flesh, his duvet beneath him and Millicent’s warm little body rumbling against his hip, but Hux was surrounded by gray stone and green grass and the roar of the sea far below. The sky was clouded, a steady drizzle falling. He couldn’t feel it on his skin, and he couldn’t smell salt. Memory would have to augment hologram there. Hux tossed the remote aside and held a palm up, imagining cold raindrops striking the skin.

Maybe he would bring Kylo here, after the rebels were finally wiped off the galaxy’s map. Once it was safer for the two of them to travel together. Having a future to fill with plans still seemed like a passing dream. The sort he’d wake up from with a pang in his heart, because it had been sweeter than reality. Given concrete proof of a chance at continued life, Hux found that he wanted it very much. Phasma sometimes called him paranoid. Maybe that was apt. He was still waiting for the consequence of this defiance. He had lost control eight months ago, or before then, and control had not been restored with his health. His life was not in his own hands. He doubted it was in Kylo’s either. Kylo only made a wish. Something else had granted it. Somewhere in the vast unseen power that Kylo tapped into, a proverbial request had been pushed across a proverbial desk and stamped with approval. But such requests didn’t have a credit value. Their price was steeper. His soul, Hux could accept. If he had one it was stained beyond laundering, and the void was welcome to it.

Hux looked out at the sea, recorded across space and time and now played on top of his bedroom. It was the color of gunmetal, darker in places where the seafloor dropped off below. The waves kicked up foam against scattered pillars of stone. Old towers like Area Null, weathered and beaten by the storms into natural features of the planet. They looked untouched by human hands. If something was left for millennia, did the hands that had formed it count anymore? Or did what time consumed become its own entity, like a tree?

He had his empire today. Perhaps he would still have it another thirty-eight years from now. After that? Whatever time Kylo bought him would run out. Surely it must. Hux shuddered to think of the alternative -- a consciousness trapped in a husk. So when he died, what then? A hundred years after or two hundred, or thousands, the First Order would become like these towers, the last vestiges of Hux’s victory unrecognizable to those who didn’t know them for what they had been. He had accomplished what he set out to do. He’d turned the chaos of the New Republic back into order. And when that victory was followed with a crown, he’d done what was expected of the galaxy’s Chancellor. He ruled.

He’d accepted death, too, with as much grace as he could manage. Now that acceptance was wasted. His body was strong. Stronger than it had been -- he was getting wiry muscle from training with Kylo and eating regular meals. He still did not measure up to his father’s ideals, of course. He was still thin. And very homosexual. He wouldn’t father any heirs. The family bloodline would end with him. _That’s for the best. This family is cursed_. Hux stroked Millicent again, though the hologram made her look like a tuft of grass.

“He’d know he was wrong, if he’d lived to see me now,” Hux told her. She kept purring. “It’s time to bury him. His ghost. There wasn’t actually enough left to bury. You’d have liked it. It was a bit like a fish tank, just with bits of Brendol instead.” The only thing more pathetic than a dying man of thirty-eight still obsessed with his dead father would be dragging the old inferiority complex into his second chance with him. Hux took a deep breath, smelling the clean indoor-scent of his room and remembering seaside air, and then shut the hologram off.

 _Time to start again. On my terms_.

Hux was struck with the need to vomit so sudden and strong that he stumbled on his way to the refresher. He stopped at the sink, unable to go the extra three steps to the toilet, and puked into the basin.

Dark blood splattered the light sink-bowl, vividly red. Maroon, like Kylo’s eye. Another wave came and Hux ejected more blood into the bowl, spitting afterward. There was something else coming up… icy panic froze his stomach. He felt he might choke. The third and last bout of vomited blood brought something hard up with it, the thing he’d felt in his throat. It made him think of a grave. Would he find his stomach full of hard-shelled insects, the rot that was promised claiming him while he still breathed? Hux removed it from his mouth with shaking fingers.

It was a dark crystal, the same size and shape as the one Kylo had gifted him with so long ago. It pulsed warmly, like an organ, like a heart, the center glowing red. It was _bleeding_. With every pulse more warm blood dripped down from the crystal, generated from it somehow. If Hux left it in the sink with the plug in he thought it would fill the basin and start splashing down to the floor. He did leave it there, but with the sink drain carefully unobstructed. He spat again for good measure, and then faced his reflection.

His eyes were drawn first to his teeth -- they were slimed dark red, but none of them felt loose. He wiggled his canines with his fingers to check, and he smiled wide at himself to study them for differences. The only strange thing about his teeth was that he looked like he’d torn someone’s throat out with them. His eyes flicked up to take in the whole picture and he fell back against the wall with a shout.

His irises were still green and sclera still white -- thank the stars for small mercies -- but around each iris, just at the edge, was a thin line of maroon. Hux watched his face go white in the mirror and then green, and then the room darkened. He fainted, sliding down the wall.

Kylo found him there and coaxed him back awake, pulling off his bloody robe and directing him into the shower. Hux refrained from calling himself hideous as Kylo massaged rough, soapy hands over his skin, if only because he had enough of his wits back to wonder whether Kylo would take offense. Kylo looked worse than he. Dark veins branched out from his eyes beneath his skin, and the eye that still had whites could no longer boast a brown iris. Both of Kylo’s eyes were golden. They glowed, molten. Cursed coins. Snake eyes. Hux hugged him beneath the warm rain of the showerhead and rested his cheek on Kylo’s shoulder, partially so that he would not need to look at Kylo’s eyes any longer. Kylo hugged him back, seeming troubled.

No more than Hux was. Hux wondered silently whether a second crystal was forming inside him even now, like a gruesome and bloody black pearl. Being built by his body around the irritating grit that was an escaped fate.

_\--his eyes, they’re turning--_

Hux stood up straight, looking at Kylo quizzically. It was almost like he’d spoken. It had the timbre of his thought-voice, a sort of silent-speak that didn’t match the acoustics of the shower, but he wasn’t in Hux’s head. At least Hux didn’t think so. They locked eyes again and Kylo shivered almost imperceptibly.

 _You’re one to talk_.

Kylo’s mouth opened in wonder. “Do that again.”

“What?” Hux snapped.

“You touched me, you--” Kylo brought his hand around to the front of Hux’s chest, resting it there as he spoke, but then his words cut off. He was looking at his hand.

Hux grabbed it and held it up in the refresher light. Kylo’s nails were loose in their beds. Hux touched the edge of one lightly and it came off, falling to the tile floor and being swept toward the drain by the running water.

“Kriff,” Hux yelped.

“It didn’t hurt,” Kylo said, looking at his hand almost blankly, without alarm. Hux supposed he did have prior experience in losing parts of himself. The nail bed was spongy and raw, and at the back of it a bone-like point jutted forward. A new nail. No, a claw.

“If this happens to me I’ll jump off the balcony,” said Hux.

“It won’t,” Kylo murmured, and Hux didn’t ask him how in all the galaxy’s hells he would know, because Kylo looked like he _did_ know. That was somehow worse. Kylo picked two more nails off, and the sound made Hux gag. It was a small _snick_ like peeling off something stuck only loosely to a surface with a bonding agent.

Hux controlled the urge to heave. If he puked bloody bile into the shower now and watched it run under Kylo’s discarded nails on top of the drain he thought his mind might break in two. “You did this to us,” he said roughly, swallowing over and over to try and get ahead of his nausea.

“I did this for us,” Kylo corrected him. “Cover your ears.”

Hux did, but he still somehow _felt_ the sound of Kylo ripping the rest of his nails off. He felt it in the center of his spine. He did not look at the drain when Kylo tapped his shoulder. He exited the shower, walking into the center of his quarters without stopping for a towel, dripping onto the marble floor.

That night when they crawled into bed together, Hux’s dreams were not his own. He rolled over into Kylo’s as easily as tossing a limb over him in sleep. He found himself back on Ilum, outside of the base. The forest was an image in black and white, and Kylo nearly matched it. Pale skin and black hair.

Kylo walked through the forest, and Hux followed behind. He kept his distance, afraid of being caught here where he didn’t belong. He wondered at first whether the scavenger would descend upon Kylo, the events of Starkiller’s destruction being replayed. Instead, Kylo ducked away to his right.

When Hux reached the place within the trees that Kylo had disappeared, he saw him up ahead, halted in front of a house transported from somewhere else. It looked Chandrilan, all rounded angles and golden-beige walls. Kylo approached the door and lay a shaking hand on it. He looked cowed, his posture more hunched over than usual.

Hux could hear his heartbeat. No, that wasn’t quite right. But he was enveloped in something that was distinctly Kylo, something that defied the senses he had names for, and that something was growing panicked.

Kylo drew his hand back to knock, stilled, and started to lower his arm. The door swung open of its own accord, yellow light spilling out onto the snow. Hux wasn’t at the correct angle to see inside the house, but he didn’t dare move now. It might break the spell, shatter the dream, and this belonged to Kylo.

On the same day that Armitage Hux was spared death, General Leia Organa had sat across from the best medical doctor that sympathy to their cause could buy and made the decision to halt treatment. It was nothing but a last-ditch effort at triage, after all. What she had was terminal. She’d known that now for six months. She’d have come around to the idea on her own if she didn’t have medics to tell her -- the flashes of pain that twisted her bones, dry like desert lightning, sometimes felt like practice-rounds for death itself.

She might have lived longer otherwise, but that night Leia gathered the remnants of her energy for one last attempt to contact her son. She got only one word out after he opened the door to their old home, greeted by the scent of tea bubbling on the stovetop and the sound of Han snoring on the couch. Leia looked up from her seat at the table, and took in the sight of the fearsome man her little boy had become.

 _Ben_.

Kylo sat straight up in bed, inadvertently startling Hux awake, but was unable to verbalize what had woken him when Hux asked. He didn’t know Hux only asked as a formality. He’d seen it too, and had a good guess at who waited for Kylo in that house. They would receive the official report soon enough: the commanding General of the Resistance was dead. Hux soothed Kylo back to sleep, holding his head on his chest and combing his fingers through his hair.

  
  


Kylo woke with the sunrise and stared at his hand. The claws had grown overnight, long and pointed and thicker than normal nails. He thought he could do some damage with them if he tried. He moved his fingers on Hux’s chest and felt Hux breathe more deeply beneath him, waking up too. Kylo was almost afraid to meet his gaze, and forced himself to. There was still green in Hux’s eyes, but only a sliver. The red next to it made it look gray. _Are you still you_?

“Don’t be daft,” Hux mumbled in response, stretching. Kylo had only asked the question inside his own head, but like the night before, Hux heard it. “You’re still you, aren’t you?”

Kylo thought so.

“You’re more of a fright than I am.” Hux said. He didn’t seem frightened. One of his hands was twirling a lock of Kylo’s hair. He didn’t look dead, either, like the nightmarish vision in the Temple. His face was flushed from the heat of sleeping tangled together, and his hair glowed copper and silver in the morning light. His lips were pink. Kylo crawled up to kiss them. “I didn’t brush my teeth last night,” Hux complained. Kylo kissed him deeper anyway.

Hux rolled them over with a strength Kylo didn’t think he had, pinning Kylo with his arms over his head. Except that Hux’s hands were on his face, caressing him. Kylo struggled against the hands on his wrists, realized the invisible palms were ice cold, and then repelled them with a burst of Force energy. Hux gasped against his mouth.

“You’re Force-null,” Kylo said incredulously, as though that might refute what he’d just felt.

“No wonder you’ve got such a big ego,” Hux said, kissing the corner of Kylo’s mouth. “If this is what you feel all the time. Hold still.”

Kylo felt a stab of pain above his left eye as if Hux had driven a durasteel ice pick into him, and then his mind was being searched. He forced himself to ‘hold still’ as Hux had so succinctly put it, though he was unused to being on the receiving end of this trick. The past six months blurred by and then Kylo saw the Temple again, heard himself speaking words he hadn’t meant for Hux to see.

“Ah.” Hux released him. Kylo brought a hand to his face, groaning. “The girl. You are the _most_ idiotic--”

“You weren’t gentle,” Kylo pressed a finger to his eyelid where it still burned. “And she’s not sick. Mom….”

Hux hummed in agreement. “There’s still been a trade of sorts between her and I. It would be fascinating to study. I don’t imagine she’d consent. You know, I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while.”

Kylo’s hands were wrenched over his head again, and this time Hux ducked down and laved his tongue over Kylo’s left nipple. Kylo cried out, arching up, and Hux sucked on the tender flesh. Hux kissed down Kylo’s ribs and stomach to his hardening cock while Kylo squirmed. All things considered, this was the best possible way for Hux to want revenge, and so Kylo tried to behave himself. The idea that Hux was suddenly capable of sending Kylo flying into the nearest wall had taken root in Kylo’s mind, and it was dizzying. Perhaps it had not yet occurred to Hux. Kylo hoped it stayed that way long enough for Hux to finish what he’d started.

Hux took Kylo into his mouth, bobbing down and swallowing around his length. Showing off. Kylo whined, and Hux pulled off. His own member was standing up stiff, framed by copper pubic hair. He looked off to the side, and Kylo heard the side table drawer slide open untouched. Hux’s face shifted in subtle satisfaction. The bottle of lube wasn’t a success like the drawer; the angle was wrong and it clattered to the floor, rolling away. Hux cursed, mood souring. It was endearing. Hux would be, in this as in all things, a perfectionist.

Hux didn’t try for the lube again, he simply straddled Kylo’s lap and rocked his hips down against Kylo’s, rubbing their cocks together. The friction was imperfect, teasing.

“I can—” Kylo cast his mind around the floor, looking for the bottle. He wanted Hux inside him badly.

“No,” Hux propped his hands on either side of Kylo’s head, leaning down and grinding himself on Kylo with his full weight. “You’ll take what you’re offered.”

Kylo’s mind spun with the knowledge that Hux could make good on that threat. It was not a situation he’d found himself in since Ren. Not that things had ever gone this far with Ren— a perpetual tease— though Kylo would have embraced it. He’d always had a thing for silver foxes.

Hux coughed under his breath, catching the thought. The next sharp jerk of his hips made Kylo moan. It was edging toward discomfort, humping each other dry. Hux reached down between them to spread the precome beading up on the heads of their cocks, offering just a bit of relief. Kylo snapped his hips up, fucking himself into Hux’s hand. Hux removed it, going back to rubbing himself against Kylo.

“I want to touch you,” Kylo said, testing the hold on his wrists. It was still there, and unbreakable through physical strength. He refrained from breaking it again with the Force. It was a marvel to him that Hux was able to maintain it. Then again, if Hux had even a fraction of the immense power Kylo knew Rey possessed….

“Not until you file those disgusting things.”

The new nails. Not an outlandish request. Hux’s cheeks and chest were tinged pink with exertion and desire. Kylo stared up at the fragments of green still visible around Hux’s pupils, making a last effort to memorize the shade as though he hadn’t already. He’d get Hux something the same color, just to see it on him. A necklace, maybe. Sea glass. Hux’s thighs trembled. He was getting close. Kylo didn’t try and connect this time — he felt his own climax approaching even without an assist from Hux’s mind. Seeing Hux alive and moving on top of him, seeking pleasure, not a fever-bright line of pain in his body, was more erotic on this particular day than anything else Kylo had experienced.

Kylo tried to pull his arms down and found them still stuck in place, even as Hux’s breaths were coming faster and turning ragged. Hux grinned at him, and Kylo’s orgasm took him by surprise. His cock pulsed, spilling hot onto his stomach. The bedframe rattled. Millie skittered out from under the bed and into the closet, her tail an orange bottlebrush. Hux thrusted against him twice more and then added his release to the mess. Kylo’s hands were finally free, Hux’s attention well and truly broken, along with everything else in the room.

Kylo stroked his palms up and down Hux’s arms. The heavy marble fountain on the balcony came loose from its moorings, leaving a pipe spraying water up into the air, and smashed through the balcony railing, obliterating part of it. A speeder’s horn sounded from below, though no sickening crash followed. The drawers in Hux’s dresser all came open and the contents flew out onto the floor, the crystal circlet smashing into powder. The lightsabers rolled off their stands. The mirror in the refresher cracked into millions of tiny interlocked hexagons. The side table flew into the wall and splintered into pieces there. The indoor fountain seemed to run red for a moment, but it must have been a trick of the light.

“Kriffing hells,” Hux croaked, collapsing to the side. Kylo chased him, gathering him up in his arms and kissing his neck, licking the sweat there and then latching on to suck a bruise into existence.

“How’s the closet?” Kylo asked when he pulled off.

“...What?”

“Millicent’s there.”

“Oh, fine I think.” Millicent appeared at the closet door, perturbed and wearing a woolen cowl across her shoulders, but unharmed. She sneezed at the disaster that was her domain. Hux laughed. “I’d have brought the tower down if I finished inside you.”

“We need to work on that.”

“It’s everything you said it was. It’s like jumping into the ocean at night.”

“You need a teacher,” Kylo said.

“Now where would I find one of those? Any recommendations?” Hux twisted his face away then to click his tongue at Millie, who ran and jumped to join them on the bed. That, at least, was in one piece. Kylo licked a path up Hux’s throat, passing over the sore bruise. It was already a stormy purple. When Hux’s eyes swiveled back toward him, Kylo thought that they weren’t an ugly color after all. They gleamed like rubies. Hux asked if Kylo would please order a tea tray brought up, with pastries.

  
  


The armistice was to be signed on Coruscant. The Resistance could not feasibly continue its fight, and only peace would relax the Order’s chokehold on the planets that allied themselves with the rebel cause. It was best for everyone in the galaxy if trade negotiations were not conducted any longer under the shadow of war.

The Supreme Leader and the Chancellor were amenable, and so the remains of the Resistance’s leadership arrived in the City of Spires. It was possible that a new senate would emerge, but not guaranteed. Finn doubted that Chancellor Hux would allow it in the end, if his reign was uninterrupted.

“We’ll regroup later. All we need is a spark,” Poe whispered meaningfully to Rey before she split off.

Rey followed her senses, ducking into an alcove as Kylo Ren strode by. He was not accompanied by the Chancellor, the first stroke of good luck that she’d had in a long time. Truly, Hux was a secondary target. If Rey was at her full strength she’d be here to challenge Kylo. But she wasn’t. The voices of the minds around her were harder to reach, even the unguarded ones. She had to strain for them. And she doubted she’d be able to call her saber back to her hand fast enough to save her life if it was wrenched away from her. Kylo Ren was a lost cause, for now, but whatever had leached away at the core of the Resistance had been concocted by the two of them. Rey would break the vile union between the Order and Ren. It was a starting point, even if Ren killed her for it. Finn had objected and then insisted on coming with her, but they all knew the only way she’d reach the Chancellor’s quarters unnoticed was to go alone while Generals Poe and Finn Dameron attended the peace council. She needed to be quick, and complete her errand before Ren wondered where she was.

Rey took the lift up, looking out the transparisteel side at the bustling city. There were souls down there that still sang their devotion to freedom. Her mission would bring them one step closer. She clutched her saber hilt tighter -- her own design, built from her old staff, with a golden crystal humming inside.

She stopped in the hallway at one point to close her eyes and listen, almost feeling that her connection to the Force was ebbing away faster the closer she got. This was dark magic indeed. She reached the door and forced it open, the simple effort immense. The chambers were wrecked, and for a moment Rey was convinced that someone else had gotten to Hux first. The lights above were sparking, and shattered glass lay in strange hexagon patterns on the floor. All furniture but the bed was tipped over and broken. The Chancellor sat on the floor by the archway out onto a partially demolished balcony, his face tilted out toward the city, sunlight playing upon him and his graying hair ruffled by the breeze. His mouth and chin were slick with blood.

Then he moved. He was still alive. Rey watched him sit up and curl in on himself to vomit blood into the wide golden bowl he held in his lap. It was nearly full. Rey’s stomach turned. She did not pity this man, but she had not considered until now that he might be just as much a victim of Ren’s bargain with the Dark as her friends were. As she was. No one could lose that much blood and live. It looked like his insides must be torn up to paste. She approached, cautiously.

Hux heard her and looked up, and Rey froze in place a few steps from his body. _His eyes_.

“I’m going to be hearing that reaction a lot, aren’t I?” Hux said. A long line of bloody spit dripped from his lips. “Excuse me, it’s almost done.” He shuddered and heaved again, more blood gushing into the bowl with a sickening thick sound, like pouring blue milk into your porridge. Rey watched in horror as Hux brought his hand to his lips and pulled a black crystal from his mouth. He sucked it like it was a melting iced dessert, and a moment later Rey saw why. This crystal was the source of all the blood. She felt that the emergence of the crystal lowered the ambient temperature of the room.

“It’ll stop soon,” Hux confided in her, smiling up at her with red-slicked teeth. “They do have their limits, it seems. I could have done with a bigger bowl. It would be interesting to measure the precise amount. But I have a guess. Do you?”

Rey blinked. She did have a guess; she’d bet fifty credits that this crystal was going to bleed the exact volume that Hux carried in his body, and not a drop more or less. Hux didn’t seem in the least surprised to see her. This could be a trap, one Ren had set for her.

“Halfway right,” Hux told her. “He’s on his way, and he’s very cross, but he didn’t plan this. I did.” Hux tipped the bowl out of his lap.

Rey staggered back, trying to keep her shoes out of the expanding red puddle on the floor. She didn’t want that blood on her. It was poison. Hux leapt up, and extended a hand out to the side. A saber hilt zipped to it, and Rey felt her stomach drop. It hadn’t been grief, and it hadn’t been _Kylo Ren_ siphoning off her power. She saw that Hux already wore one saber clipped to his belt. The one he held in his hand opened and a purple crystal floated out. Hux started to replace it with the black crystal, still dripping with blood, and then paused.

He held the bloody gem out to her like an offering. The image was ghoulish, and Rey took another step back, her face twisting in fear. The crystal thrummed with power, but it was Dark power. Hux laughed and put the crystal inside the saber hilt. “Suit yourself.”

“You’re a monster,” Rey hissed at him.

Hux activated the blade, and the room dimmed as if they stood under the sun and a cloud just passed overhead. It put off no heat. Standing before this darksaber was like standing in front of an open conservator. Hux gave it a couple practice swings, testing the balance.

Rey activated her own blade, dropping into a defensive stance. “You think you’re going to kill me?” She asked. No matter what the man in front of her had become, he was still, at his core, just a proud and self-centered fascist. The sort that starched his underwear and stocked up on hair pomade.

“You’re right, about the pomade if not about my pants. But, no.” Hux said. “I’m not going to kill you. He is.”

Rey stepped to the side, keeping Hux in her periphery as she faced Kylo Ren. She sent a quick prayer to the Force that Poe and Finn had not tried to physically prevent him from leaving the council and been slain for their trouble.

Kylo activated his saber, coming around to Rey’s front. They were a trio of flame together, red-orange-gold. In Rey’s mind Kylo saw Hux as the monster from his vision in the Temple, the image nearly complete. Hux wore red today, and the last of the green in his eyes had been consumed. Kylo chanced a look at Hux himself, and was soothed by it. He could see a high pink flush on Hux’s cheekbones and the bruise on his neck peeking from his collar. This was still the man Kylo loved. He was beautiful.

“Yield, and you can go.” Hux said calmly.

Kylo sniffed. He had no intention of letting Rey go. Not after he’d seen what she had planned. The image of Hux with a saber through his middle would be seared into Kylo’s memory now. He would not let that happen.

Rey charged Kylo, having deemed him the bigger threat. Correctly, Hux admitted to himself. He thought he could hoist Rey up to the ceiling and choke her there if need be, but he would prefer to watch Kylo handle it. Gold and orange sabers flared off each other with flashes of white and blasts of static. Kylo and the scavenger girl were very nearly equals, even as her connection to the Force drained away. Both their minds raced. Hux felt and saw all.

Kylo thought he wanted to kill her. Hux saw that he wanted to spare her, buried so far beneath rage that it was ignored. Kylo pushed Rey out toward the balcony, putting all his strength into the blows he rained down on her. Even as she blocked them she was driven back toward the break in the railing.

Rey tripped over a piece of rubble and might have been run through. Instead she found herself dragged backwards and held a thousand feet in the air, above the rushing speeders of the Coruscanti capital. It wasn’t Kylo’s Force presence that had a grip on her; the cold hands under her arms were more delicate. Kylo stared at her, breathing hard. Rey let her saber fall, disappearing into oblivion below. It wasn’t yielding. Not exactly -- not in her heart. But, Chancellor Hux seemed to take it that way.

“You and your ilk. Vermin, all of you. Never let me see you again,” Hux said quietly, and then pulled Rey forward until her toes just hovered over marble instead of open air again and let her drop onto the balcony.

She landed hard, grunting. Hux swept toward the refresher, brushing past Kylo’s back and catching his gaze briefly. It wouldn’t become a Chancellor to appear before the people with blood drying on his face, and so Hux would leave this decision to Kylo.

 _Clear your head. Don’t do it angry_. Hux thought, and was gone.

Kylo looked down at Rey. She had crawled forward, away from the edge. He brought his saber around and hovered it in front of her.

“Don’t,” she said, and then winced as Kylo read her mind.

“You’ll never stop. If I let you go you’ll try again,” he said, and made his choice.

  
  


Hux stood in front of the viewport. Not on the bridge. That was too...populated. In a past life Hux would have stationed himself there, relishing the attention of his men. Even as they focused on their work they were cognizant of him. But now, Hux tried to secret himself away. It was almost a game. Kylo found him here anyway, as Hux knew he would. Kylo’s big hands wound around Hux’s waist, a thumb circling his navel through his clothing.

Millicent waited in their quarters. They’d officiated things shortly after the armistice, and so there was no pretense of Kylo having chambers he’d never enter. But for now, Hux and Kylo stood before a transparisteel window, looking out at the pinpoints of the passing stars on the way to Arkanis. Some of them weren’t stationary.

“You know, my mother used to tell me to wish on shooting stars.” Kylo said.

Hux smiled at him. “Why would anyone do something so foolish?”

“Is it?”

“It is,” Hux said, but he didn’t stop smiling.

“Mom said the Force could hear you when you told the stars your deepest wishes.” Of course, Leia had meant the Light, but Kylo never had much luck with that. “There’s another one,” Kylo pointed up at it. “Make a wish.”

“I will _not_.”

“I’ve got everything I want,” Kylo conceded, but then he fixed his eyes on the white comet-trail of the shooting star, held Hux tight, and wished for more.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I'm not allowed to write things that aren't my WIPs Jesus Christ. Do I want a Force-corrupted Padme after writing this? Yes. Imagery of Hux with bleeding crystals in his mouth comes from a piece of fan art by @PerpetuallyC on Twitter!


End file.
